Paul Case’s “Occult Fundamentals and Spiritual Unfoldment” (02/01/2015 Amazon Review)

This the third Paul Foster Case text I have reviewed at Amazon (see my two-star review of “The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages” and my three-star review of “Esoteric Secrets of Meditation and Magic”), and it contains some interesting and enlightening material germane to the brand of “electrical” spirituality that I teach, along with some occult “fundamentals” that I don’t fully resonate with.

On the first page, Case writes:

“We live in an electric universe. Our bodies are electrical machines. The food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the clothes we wear, the houses over our heads everything in our world is made of electricity. Our senses tell us we are surrounded by things innumerable: the Ageless Wisdom declares, ‘There is only One Thing.’ Modern science confirms this ancient teaching. Physicists now picture the universe as a great ocean of pulsing, vibrating electromagnetic energy, and psychologists tell us that this One Thing, electro-magnetism, presents itself to our consciousness in the particular forms which we call ‘things’, because our senses are what they are. Let the range of our senses be augmented ever so little and we should find ourselves in a different world, containing any number of things of whose existence we cannot even dream at present.

"’Matter’, then, is not a reality, not a thing. It is just a word, a name for a mental abstraction which we make from our sense experiences caused by a mysterious "something". To call that"something" which presents itself to us in such a variety of guises ‘electricity’ is merely to choose a convenient label for a group of our observations as to what happens under certain conditions. It is important to remember that the noun "electricity" is only a label. In other lands and days, the same hidden force was given other names. Now that physicists agree that light is identical with electro-magnetic vibrations, we may discover that the medieval occultists were not so far from the truth after all.”

Case refers to the great mystic-occultist Eliphas Levi (1810-1875) regarding electromagnetic energy:

“The strange symbols of the Ageless Wisdom reveal a true science to him who can rightly interpret them. From those symbols Levi learned the secret of the Astral Light, and the knowledge so gained enabled him to make a remarkable prophecy. Every detail of his prediction has been fulfilled through the achievements of modem invention in making use of "a force more powerful than steam", which is ‘a fluid and a perpetual vibration’, and which, long before modem theories of the constitution of matter were framed, Levi described as ‘an electromagnetic ether, diffused throughout infinity, the substance of heaven and earth’. Men of science laughed at him in 1886. Today their grandchildren paraphrase his doctrine but ignore his genius.”

Case understands that “cosmic electricity” equates to spiritual energy relative to a practicing mystic or magician, and that “playing” with this energy entails risks. He writes, ‘The Great Magic Agent is cosmic electricity, and he who undertakes to control its tremendous energy must be prepared to face some degree of danger.”

Case continues to describe this “cosmic electricity”:

“An immaterial power expressing itself as light, as the force producing all vital phenomena, animating every living creature - an invisible, impalpable, yet real, force, which sets worlds dancing through space, and upon them plays the drama of life. Science pictures this. Science itself is the working of that same power through human brains - an aspect of the cosmic process of self-revelation whereby the Life-power eternally makes Itself known to Itself.

“Call it electricity, Astral Light, Prana, Ruach, or whatever you please. No name can define It. Names are only designations. What the Life-power is in Itself we do not know, nor may our finite minds hope to comprehend that mystery. Yet may we apprehend It as subsisting by Itself, independent of every mode of existence.

“Always Itself, absolutely one, complete, whole and perfect, L.V.X. (Latin for Light) is formless, indivisible and changeless. Jacob Boehme called it the Ungrund (Foundationless), the subsistence behind and beneath all forms of substance, the rootless root of the energy which gives rise to all movement, the Causeless Cause of the life of every creature. Limitless, infinite, It has no boundary. Hence, as more than one seer has declared, Its center must be everywhere. This mathematical truth is a key to many secrets of the Ageless Wisdom. It means that the Limitless Light is the central reality, now and always, of everything, of every creature, of every person. Because L.V.X. is the essential principle of all activity, It is the Being of all that you are, the Thinker of all that you think, the Actor in all that you do. To help you to realize this truth, instead of merely believing it and talking about it, and to show you how to make this truth a practical working principle in your daily life is one aim of this course.”

Although Case understands that a transcendental Electromagnetic Force underlies and animates existence, he is unable to provide a method for directly connecting to this Light-Energy. Instead, he recommends New Age-like affirmations:

“As an aid to this end we have formulated a series of affirmations to be used every morning and every evening by our affiliates. In the morning the series should be said aloud, beginning from No. 1. In the evening the reverse order should be followed. Face East in the morning and West in the evening, not because of any special occult virtue which may reside in either direction, but because your subconsciousness knows, if you do not, the age-old symbolism of the places of the sun's rising and setting. In short, the position you take stimulates certain important associations of ideas which help to put your personal consciousness in harmony with the rhythm of cosmic life-currents.

“These statements formulate the truth about yourself, no matter whether you comprehend that truth in all its details at this time or not. Recited from 1 to 10, the affirmations are a series of logical deductions corresponding to the path of the descent of the Life-Power into the conditions of Name and Form which constitute the world we live in.”

Case properly differentiates between the “lower,” or “spinal,” Kundalini and the Descent of Divine Power (Shaktipat):

“One thing, however, I can tell you. The current is not turned on by any practice of concentration upon centers in the physical body. Such practice only produces congestion and other undesirable results. Neither do you ‘raise the Kundalini’ by any effort of that nonentity, ‘personal will.’ The current must rise, but it must rise in accordance with the familiar electrical law that we must ‘step down’ the current in order to apply it. The Life Power is cosmic electricity, and it has to go from a higher to a lower potential. To raise the Kundalini, you have to bring down the undifferentiated Life Power from above the plane of personality, and because that force travels in cycles, it will raise a portion of the coiled up energy in its return. How are you to do this? The place to begin is with your intellect. You have to reason out for yourself the truth of the doctrine that you are a center of expression for the One Life-Power, which does all things through you. You have to see that the logical consequence of this fact is a certain mental attitude toward that Life-Power. The mental attitude is summed up in a single word, RECEPTIVITY, and it is indicated by the cup-shaped crescent at the top of the Mercury symbol.”

Case properly identifies receptivity (or Ohms reduction) as a key component of the “electrical spiritual paradigm,” but he fails to identify its complementary key component: connectivity (or Voltage). And beyond the excerpts I’ve provided, he also fails to delve more deeply into the divinization, or en-Light-enment, process.

Case’s attempt to translate his “electrical spiritual vision” into an “occult vision” meets with mixed results when he turns his attention to Qabalah, alchemy, astrology, and gematria, and attempts to integrate these with Hindu yoga, specifically the Tattvas (the constituent principles of reality)  His endless, attributions and symbolic connections, though interesting, are replete with errors. I can’t even begin to counter all of Case’s erroneous attributions – it would take a book – but here’s a sample of his faulty correlations, with my comment in parentheses:

“The Sanskrit name for superconsciousness is SATTVA. It means literally, ‘illumination material’. Its alchemical symbol is: [Mercury glyph].” (“Sattva,” one of the three gunas, is not a synonym for superconsciousness, and to correlate Sattva with Mercury, or any planet, is ridiculous.)

Now that I’ve read this book, I can guess that Franz Bardon (see my one-star review of “Initiation into Hermetics”) derived much of his spiritual metaphysics and cosmology, primarily based on the Tattvas (the emanated hierarchical constituent principles of reality), from Case, who derived  it from Rama Prasad’s “Nature’s Finer Forces.”

The problem with Prasad’s version of the Tattvas is that it is incomplete and mistakenly elevates Akasha (Ether, or the Space Element) to the top of the Tattva hierarchy. And if one builds a metaphysical system with Ether as the highest Tattva, then one’s system is sure to be faulty and disintegral. In order to deeply understand the Tattvas, one must study Kashmir Shaivism, and a good book to start with (especially with regard to the Tattvas) is the one I reviewed just just prior to this one: “Kashmir Shaivism” by Swami Shankarananda.

Paul Foster Case was a “victim” of his times in that he had access to limited and deficient spiritual and occult teachings. If he’d had access to the esoteric Dharmas now available, such as Kashmir Shaivism, Dzogchen, and Ayurveda, he doubtless would have produced spiritual and occult teachings superior to the ones in this book. Nonetheless, I still think this text, the best of the three Case books I’ve read, provides plenty of interesting and worthwhile material for occultists and Truth seekers.